This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

These wars are over except for fighting

More than 50,000 killed in Kashmir. Some 70,000 dead in Sri Lanka. At least 8,000 lives lost in the West Bank and Gaza since 1988.

The death tolls are daunting in three of the most intractable, insoluble conflicts of our time. And more people are destined to die as long as these flashpoints defy diplomatic solution.

But it's simply wrong to say they can't be resolved diplomatically. They already have been.

What's truly depressing is that most of the casualties were preventable. The dirty secret of these conflicts is that the fighting carries on even though there's nothing left to fight about. Diplomats and negotiators have already sorted it out – on paper.

We've known this for years. In Sri Lanka and the Middle East, the antagonists long ago agreed to frameworks, created by Norwegian diplomats, to thrash out their differences at the bargaining table – not the battle field.

Now, add Kashmir to the list of trouble spots that diplomats have untangled. In a little-noticed article published this month in the New Yorker, Steve Coll reveals how Pakistan and India conducted secret negotiations over the past few years that found common ground over the disputed territory.

Pakistani strongman Pervez Musharraf authorized the diplomatic back-channel to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, with envoys meeting in hotel rooms overseas. The two sides thrashed out a so-called "non-paper" – diplomatic jargon for an unsigned document that could be denied and disowned if the public ever found out.

The Kashmir conflict, like those in the Holy Land and Sri Lanka, has endured for decades. Kashmir gets the least attention, but is perched on a knife's edge. The Line of Control – a de facto border separating Pakistani and Indian forces – has been the venue for daily shelling and terrorist infiltrations over the decades. Since partition a half-century ago, the two nuclear-armed states have fought three formal wars over this pastoral state, not counting the undeclared war over Kargil in 1999.

YOU MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN...

As army chief, Musharraf launched the Kargil attack a decade ago. But after making himself president he came to realize that the road to Kashmir was a dead end. By 2007, his back-channel had produced a non-paper so detailed that the two sides were debating semi-colons. Aides started setting the table for a historic summit between Musharraf and Singh.

The plan called for creation of an autonomous region where local Kashmiris could move freely and trade on both sides of the territorial boundary. Over time, the border would become irrelevant and the two sides could demilitarize the Himalayan mountain passes.

But if the rival governments were prepared to compromise, how would they prepare public opinion? Musharraf convened his diplomats and generals. All were onside; all understood that war between two nuclear powers was pointless, that territory could not be conquered by military force or pried loose by terrorist tactics.

But when it came time to sell it to the public, the timing was all wrong. After 10 years of dictatorship, Musharraf's popularity had plummeted and he was under siege from pro-democracy protestors. The summit plans were put off for a better day. The non-paper never saw the light of day.

But it will, one day. The tangled web of Kashmiri nationalism, sectarianism and terrorism has been untangled. On paper.

YOU MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN...

The top political echelons have seen the light. But the body politic in India and Pakistan remain in the dark about this shared, secret vision for Kashmir. As one Pakistani official told the New Yorker, "the public mood is out of sync."

The same was largely true among Israelis and Palestinians, and between the Sinhalese and Tamils of Sri Lanka: Conceptually, the compromises could be worked out. Politically, they remained a hard sell.

We saw that at Camp David, where former U.S. president Jimmy Carter helped Israel and Egypt reach a historic peace; the fallout came later in Cairo when a deeply unpopular Egyptian president Anwar Sadat was assassinated.

Politicians are still looking over their shoulders, wondering whether they have enough clout to persuade their people, or must pander to them; whether they can lead people to peace, or mislead them into war.

Get more opinion in your inbox

Get the latest from your favourite Star columnists with our Opinion newsletter.

We can predict with confidence what a final peace will look like in each of these conflict zones. What we can't say is how many battles will be fought, and lives lost, before everyone realizes that the final outcome will be largely unchanged.

More Opinion

Top Stories

More from The Star & Partners

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com